BitPay is “on pace” to process $1 bln per year in Bitcoin payments as its merchants see a combined 328 percent annual volume growth. In a blog post released Monday, the flagship Bitcoin payments gateway said it had seen “major growth” in the last year particularly, with the majority of activity stemming from its US market.

“We're now on pace to process over $1 bln annually in Bitcoin payment acceptance and payouts, and we've already grown our payments dollar volume 328 percent year-over-year from 2016,” the company confirmed. This year has seen BitPay grace the headlines, announcing exclusive partnerships such as the multimillion-dollar Dubai Aston Plaza real estate project with the UK’s Baroness Mone.

At the same time, its support of the upcoming SegWit2x hard fork has received mixed reactions, with cryptocurrency scam listings service Badbitcoin.org even explicitly threatening to remove BitPay from its safelist over the decision. With Bitcoin remaining over $4,000, however, business is booming for merchants worldwide thanks to increased regulatory clarity. Japanese efforts to drastically increase its merchant acceptance of Bitcoin also continues.

Wow...this is telling us something about the continuing growth of Bitcoin and its much bigger potential for more in the coming years. While we are seeing some little bad news about our favorite darling named Bitcoin, there are also bigger good news that can always excite many Bitcoin enthusiasts. I am sure that this decade would be known as the cryptocurrency years laying the foundation for the future of this alternative ecosystem we might call as our own (or am I right claiming such?). With more activities coming for the next few months, we should expect pressures building up for Bitcoin to finally getting into the $5,000 mark.

Because Bitcoin payment acceptance is growing, there are many businesses and companies that accepted bitcoin payments, so that they cooperate with bitpay to convert bitcoin in to fiat currency, and bitcoin price increases over time allow their transactions to be even bigger to reach over $1 bln annually